


Monster

by biblionerd07



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A good deal of blood, Angst, Canon Typical Violence, Demon Dean, canon typical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 12:05:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1857411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas finds him elbow deep in a man's internal organs, but he's there to take Dean home and isn't bothered by any of Dean's arguments. (Spoilers for finale, obviously.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

Cas finds him elbow-deep in a man’s internal organs, the bloodied First Blade at his side, the blood splattered across his face painting new freckles on his cheeks. He grunts but doesn’t say anything and Cas watches for a long time as he guts the man.

“Hello, Dean.” Cas finally says, and Dean’s hands stutter at the familiar greeting. His lips tighten and he grunts again but offers no other acknowledgment of Cas. “You left a trail.” Cas sounds wholly at ease, like they’re talking over burgers about the weather.

“What do you want?” Dean asks.

“I think you know what I want, Dean.” Cas says softly. Dean sighs.

“What, you think I’m going back with you? Gonna spend the rest of eternity in a devil’s trap?” He snorts. “I’m working here.”

“Yes, I see that.” Cas’s voice is still so mild and for some reason its raising Dean’s hackles.

“What do you want?” Dean snarls. “I’m a demon. I’m doing what demons do.” He throws himself into the man’s chest cavity with vigor. Cas watches blandly for a minute, not flinching from the sounds or the way blood is spilling onto the pavement in pools around Dean’s knees.

“Oh, Dean. Your problem is the same problem you’ve had for so long.” Cas sounds tired now, voice matching the dark circles under his eyes and the hollowness of his cheeks. “You don’t think you deserve to be saved.” The first time he said those words, his voice was questioning, wondering. He couldn’t believe the depth of Dean’s self-loathing. He believes it now. His voice is flat, toneless, not even angry at Dean the way he might have once been.

“I can’t be.” Dean surprises them both with how soft his voice is. “I’m not just a demon. I’m a Knight of Hell.”

“Hm.” Cas nods. “A greater problem than a crossroads demon, yes.”

“Let me guess, you have an idea?” Dean sneers. “Your ideas always work out so well.”

Cas inclines his head to acknowledge Dean’s point. “I’ve figured out where I’ve gone wrong, all these times before.” He takes a step closer to meet Dean’s black eyes. “This time, I’m not trying to do anything else. You have my undivided attention.”

Dean swallows hard before he barks out a laugh. “You’re flattering yourself if you think I did this to get your attention, angel.”

“I know why you did this. The same reason you do everything—you did it for Sam. But what are you doing for Sam now, Dean? He hasn’t slept in two days.” There’s an edge of anger in Cas’s voice and Dean remembers Cas loves Sam, too; Dean no longer has the corner on that market. “Are you going to leave him to make deals with any demon he can summon?”

Dean grits his teeth against the memory of _I lied_ and Sam’s face when Metatron struck. “No crossroads demon would be stupid enough to make that deal with him. They don’t have the juice and they’ve got orders not—” He breaks off. Cas could possibly be smiling, if it’s not a trick of the moonlight.

“You’ve ordered them not to make deals with Sam, Dean? That doesn’t sound very demonic.” He could almost be teasing Dean now. Dean rips viciously at a rib in his way.

“I can’t be cured.” He insists. “Human blood won’t do anything for me.”

“Human blood, no. But grace will.”

Dean looks up quickly. “You can’t be serious. You barely have the juice to heal yourself, let alone me.”

“Not heal you. Sam found a spell. We extract grace, work it into the spell, along with some human blood, and inject you. Treatments.” Cas stoops now, so their eyes are at the same level. “We can fix this.”

“And then what?” He’s given up all guise of still gutting the man. He stares at the blood on his hands and the blade at his side and feels his fingers trembling. “What am I supposed to do after that?”

Cas shrugs. “Anything you want. Keep hunting. Give up hunting. Open a B & B in Vermont.” His lips curl and he’s definitely smiling now and it makes Dean feel so much worse.

“What about you? You’ll be human again?” His voice is shaking but he knows Cas will pretend not to notice.

“I will.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.” Dean can’t meet his eyes, can’t see all that earnestness in his expression. He’ll break.

“You never had to.” Cas murmurs. “It’s my choice.”

“What if I say no?” Dean raises his chin, tries to sound defiant, but they both know which side he’d rather be on.

“That will be _your_ choice.” Cas says softly. “And eventually your brother will be forced to kill you.” It’s manipulative, really, bringing up Sam, but it’s the truth. “How well do you think he’ll do after that? Alone?”

“Why alone?” Dean asks sharply. “You won’t stay with him?”

“Dean.” There’s that rueful half-smile, that tilted head. “I’m burning out. Either I get rid of this grace or I die. And if I can’t stay with you and keep you safe, what’s my purpose here?” He reaches out and his hand falls to Dean’s shoulder, where his handprint was once seared into Dean’s skin. “I know who this man is, Dean. And all the others like him. I know what they did to children, their own children, mostly. You’re not killing innocent people. You’re a demon, but you’re still going after monsters. That’s who you are.”

And Dean falls apart a little, heaving shaking breaths his lungs don’t need. “Cas…” He whispers, his voice breaking on the name he’d avoided saying for so long. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Come home.” Cas tells him, and oh, how long has Dean wished to hear Cas call it that? How long has he dreamt of that gravelly voice echoing through the bunker permanently? He thinks of Sam, drinking himself sick and going through every book in the library, summoning Crowley for hours and hunting down demon after demon to try to get Dean back. He thinks of Cas’s exhaustion and the way he’s probably begged Sam to sleep but couldn’t spare the mojo to force him to do so. He thinks about Bobby willingly letting them burn his flask before he became something twisted and dark, and he looks at the blood crusting across his knuckles and he wants to vomit.

“Okay.” Dean says, and he lets Cas put an arm around his shoulders and lift him away from the corpse on the ground. Cas’s hands are gentle as they wipe the blood from Dean’s and he lets Dean pick up the First Blade and tuck it away. Cas leads him like a child to a nondescript sedan—who knows what happened to the Continental—and as Cas buckles his seat belt for him—why, when he can’t die?—his hands rest briefly on Dean’s chest and his forehead against Dean’s and Cas closes his eyes and breathes him in for a minute.

“Thank you.” Cas murmurs, and as Dean’s about to ask for what, Cas continues, “Thank you for letting me find him and thank you for his willingness to be saved.” He is praying, Dean realizes, his gratitude spilling over instinctively, and Dean has to blink and swallow a few times. Cas crosses around to get in the driver’s seat and sits with his hands on the steering wheel for a minute before looking over at Dean with a soft smile and in one breath sums up everything Dean’s ever wanted out of life.

“Let’s go home. Sam’s waiting.”


End file.
